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We are citizen journalists in Winnipeg. When not breaking exclusive stories, we analyze news coverage by the mainstream media and highlight bias, ignorance, incompetence, flawed logic, missed angles and, where warranted, good work. We serve as the only overall news monitors in the province of Manitoba. We do the same with politicians (who require even more monitoring.) EMAIL: black_rod_usher@yahoo.com

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights. The Holocaust lie that won't die.

Last
Friday, following the official opening ceremonies at the Canadian
Museum for Human Rights, the Winnipeg Free Press, the propaganda arm of
the museum, updated with video and slideshow many of the stories it had
published in the run up to the opening.

One of these was a column by "professional journalist" Dan Lett that appeared Aug. 1st.

Something he wrote stuck in our craws back then and the update gives us an opportunity to remind Lett - he's entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts. He wrote:

"(The
Holocaust) gallery, as promised, focuses not on the atrocity per se,
but on how the Nazis used legal means to galvanize their genocidal
policies. And how the Holocaust directly resulted in the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights,
the first attempt to codify in international law the principle that no
country can pass laws to dehumanize any group of citizens.

Dr. Curle:The
organizational framework for the museum has evolved over time. One of
our challenges has been to conceptually locate the Holocaust and the UN
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in the Museum. The historical
proximity of these two events suggested an inspiring relationship
between violation and response. As content development moved forward,
the Museum, with the input of experts in this area, realized that this
relationship oversimplified both the history of the Holocaust and the
history of the Universal Declaration, and exaggerated the actual
historical connections between the two. In
its present conceptual articulation the Museum has de-linked a direct
causal relationship between the Holocaust and the Universal
Declaration."

Added Curle:

"Taking
the Holocaust on its own terms in this way speaks powerfully to
broader human rights concerns regarding the power of the modern state,
the vulnerabilities of civil society to become an instrument of
oppression, and the controversial relationship between war and human
rights protection, but does not instrumentalize the Holocaust to tell a creation myth about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."